Prodigal Kiwi(s) Blog

Maggi Dawn on Sabbath & Church

Continuing to catch up with talks from Greenbelt Gatherings, I’ve been listening to my friend Maggi Dawn from 2003. Her talk being titled: Church in the Noughties. It’s one talk, but has two themes running through it. The first is to do with the Fourth of the Ten Commandments – the “4^th” having to do with Sabbath. Maggi traces the history – a “whistle-stop journey” – of Sabbath from the Old Testament (or “First Testament”) to the Reformation (Post-Reformation). While the second theme, building on the first, was Maggi thought’s on the importance of gathered Church with reflections on “alt-worship”, “emergent church” and other “experiments” on the edge or beyond the edge of traditional “Sunday” church.  It was the latter part of the talk that I found most interesting, confirming for me that my own thinking about established church & new forms of church follow Maggi’s very closely. 

“…What shape should work, Church and the Sabbath take in 21st century, western culture – post-evangelical, alternative, emerging, liquid, virtual? Should we abandon traditional Sunday worship or fight to revive it?” 

It’s not a long talk, but you’ll find it here.  

p.s. If you like what she has to say, check out her books too. She’s a very gifted writer and communicator (see her blog).

Photo credit - Jonny Baker.

The Prophets and the Environment

I received an interesting set of notes recently: the Eco-Justice Notes. It features a reflection that links Walter Brueggemann’s reading of “The Prophets” to environmental and ecological issues. It’s worth a read. It’s written by Paul & Jane Barru. Here’s an excerpt: 

“…Walter Brueggemann gives us that gift in his brand-new book, "The Practice of Prophetic Imagination: Preaching an Emancipating Word." Brueggemann breaks open a reading of prophetic oracles where unavoidable consequences are more important than direct punishment. 

In this fresh reading, the bad news of the prophets is not that God will come in a dramatic and unexpected way to smite us, but rather that God will not intervene to protect us from the inherent consequences of our pervasive sin. 

Such a prophetic word about consequences is painfully relevant in this time of ecological devastation. We know full well what we are doing wrong -- warping the climate, polluting the biosphere, destroying habitat and pushing species into extinction, exhausting scarce resources, exploiting livestock and workers, seeking our own comfort and privilege at any cost to our neighbors or descendents. 

The biblical style of prophecy tells us the distressing news that, when we so blatantly violate God's intention for creation, the expected consequences will follow. 

Brueggemann writes about the prophetic "therefore" which connects cause and effect, "a connectedness that dominant imagination believes, with its power and wisdom and wealth, it can overcome." He draws examples -- from Hosea, Amos, Micah and Isaiah -- where, in legal terms: 

‘The 'therefore' stands between an indictment and a sentence. The indictment is a recital of the commandments that have been violated ... The sentence concerns the dismantling of creation. ... The daring 'therefore' makes a connection that depends on a robust creation theology. The argument is that a violation of the commandments of Sinai results in the collapse of creation.’ 

The "therefore" expresses a creation theology because it recognizes the interconnectedness of all of creation, of humans and the rest of creation together. It proclaims that all of creation is ordered and structured to work well within the shape of God's shalom, and that it will not function when shalom is violated…” 

You can read the complete reflection here. 

Andrew Perriman: “The curse of patriarchy and the hope of new creation”: and a Corollary on Marriage

Another thoughtful and thought-provoking post from Andrew Perriman – further reflection emerging out of his reflection on the themes of chapter 6 (“Women in the Story of God”) of JR. Daniel Kirk’s book Jesus Have I Loved, But Paul? A Narrative [Storied] Approach to the Problem of Pauline Christianity. I posted on his initial review here. 

Here’s an excerpt from his latest reflection: 

Referencing Genesis 3, he writes: 

“…The words for “desire” and “rule over” are the same in both texts. The parallelism strongly suggests, on the one hand, that the “desire” of the woman for the man is not to be understood positively—in the postlapsarian world the woman and man are at odds with each other in much the same way that sin and Cain are at odds with each other…” 

Which, I guess makes life-giving, genuine, deepening, and life-long marriages all the more special; and all the more the result of a life-time of grace-full acts of love, care, affirmation, valuing, encouragement etc which counter and subvert the power of sin and death; the inherent brokenness and conflict that lies within the hearts of each one of us and at the heart of each relationship, not least marriage. Surely then, these marriages are reflections and signs of “New Creation”, so St. Paul can liken the marriage relationship to the relationship between Christ and the Church. Signs are for seeing, but the sad reality is that so few of us see that our marriages are the signs they are, we don’t frame or understand them theologically and so we give up and the ‘sign’ is defaced and New Creation is rolled back. Far from being condemnatory, relationally naive, or from casting stones I feel deeply saddened by and grieve for the increasing loss of this hope-full sign.   

The Church is surely write to encourage prayer for couples and for those marriages it blesses in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. I’m again grateful for the work of Harville Hendrix (on this blog here, here. Plus here for why marriage is a poor choice in a narcissistic consumer culture) and his deep commitment to healing, saving, and re-enlivening marriages. 

And, reflecting on “Signs of New Creation”, Andrew writes: 

“…The church is a sign in the present of the future renewal of creation, and it will be a much more effective sign of a coming world in which it is no longer necessary for the man to rule over the woman if it acts that reality out and does not merely pay lip service to it. Jesus did not only proclaim the coming restoration of the people of God, he enacted it concretely through exorcisms, healings, the rehabilitation of sinners, and carefully staged prophetic performances such as the entry into Jerusalem and the action in the temple. 

There are, naturally, limits. The extent to which new creation may be anticipated in the life of the church is necessarily circumscribed because sin still crouches at the door, creation still waits to be “set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Rom. 8:21). But what I like about the eschatological argument is that it allows us both to acknowledge the social problematic and to give a compelling theological reason to bring a new egalitarian reality into existence…” 

For Andrew’s complete post, go here. 

J.R. Daniel Kirk, Andrew Perriman, and the “backward-moving force of the future”

And so, as the Blog Tour for J.R. Daniel Kirk’s new book Jesus I Have Loved, But Paul? A Narrative Approach to the Problem of Pauline Christianity pulls into the Andrew Perriman way-station, before continuing its journey. Andrew reflects on Chapter Six “Women in the Story of God”. 

Andrew opens with some comment around a theme, which he has championed, not least in his wonderful book The Future of the People of God: Reading Romans Before and After Western Christendom. He subtitles this section, and I had to laugh: “Freshly Squeezed Narrative without the Apocalyptic Bits”. His brief reflection lightly circles around a question he puts to Kirk: “why in a book that makes so much of the narrative structure of our belief system is there no reference to the apocalyptic extension of the story into the future of the people of God?” He continues, “…what about Jesus’ future—[his] “coming” to deliver his persecuted followers from their enemies, to judge Israel and the nations (Jim West observes that Kirk plays down the judgment theme in the Gospels [I think we all (mistakenly) do for a whole range of 21-century and socio-cultural reasons – Paul], and to be confessed as Lord by the nations? It seems to me that a narrative that jumps from Easter to the final renewal of creation is not much of a narrative any more…” In a sense this is an aside to the task of reviewing chapter six, but I think Andrew is correct to raise it as often as he does. One answer, by the way, to the question he puts to Kirk above, is that Andrew has already written the book, demonstrating how in St. Paul’s letter to the church(s) in Rome, the apocalyptic extends into the future of the people of God! 

“I think”, Andrew writes “that it raises an important question about the adequacy of the model as it is being developed here. Are there not risks involved in constructing a narrative ethic based on only half the story? Can we in principle assume that an apocalyptic ethic will look the same as a post-apocalyptic ethic?” He continues: “…Kirk makes much of the fact that the future impinges on the present—he speaks aptly of the “backward-moving force of the future”… But this argument is put forward at the expense of the political story…” 

Here are some excerpts from his reflection that address chapter six. You will find his full here. 

“…The “equality” of male and female is grounded in Christ… 

… The purpose of the church is actively to realize its future “new creation” identity in the here and now. Kirk writes: “I believe that the calling before us is to prayerfully discern what it might mean to grasp the future that God has in store for creation and draw it into the present”… 

… I [Andrew] found myself wondering, as I read this chapter, whether we should not simply call Christian patriarchy—the prolongation of the rule of the man over the woman—a sin, a dark shadow cast on the bright image of humanity made new… 

… Kirk nicely suggests that the anonymity and modesty of the “commendable women” in the Gospels in many ways illustrate more effectively than the obtuseness and self-importance of the male disciples the extraordinary inversion of the leadership paradigm that we find in Jesus’ practice and teaching. It is part of the ambiguity of the matter in scripture that the “full potential latent in these early inclusions of women in the Jesus story is not fully realized in the ministry of Jesus”, but they function “as cracks in the glass ceiling” of the social hierarchies that make women subordinate to and dependent upon men… 

… In the last section of the chapter Kirk sets out to explore “what it might mean to integrate women into the cruciform narrative of our Christian communities”. The big picture of the Christian story—it doesn’t hurt to keep restating this—is that “God has bound himself to humanity, through the nation of Israel, for the purpose of bringing the world from the failure of old creation into the glory of new creation”. Where this narrative diverges from Judaism is in the fact that “the means God chooses is a crucified Messiah whose kingdom-inaugurating activity was one of upending the economy of the world”. A.K.M. Adam has noted a certain tension between the emphasis on the cruciform shape of the kingdom story and the “imperishable vindication” of resurrection and new creation. There is something to this, but I think Kirk would respond that the way of renewal always takes us through the cross and the radical overturning of all that is worldly—including hierarchy…” 

Read Andrew’s full ‘review’ / reflection here. You might also find this post and this one, both written by Andrew, of value. 

Walter Brueggemann - Some More Thoughts …

I’ve now listened a few more times to the Walter Brueggemann interview I recently featured here. 

To encourage you to listen – if of course you haven’t already – here’s some more excerpts. It might be useful to reflect on them, and indeed your own life through the lenses he provides when in his interactions with the Psalms he talks about the cycle of: orientation, disorientation, and re-orientation (or “new orientation”). 

Brueggemann: … The prophets characteristically revolve around judgment and hope, I'll do two passages, one of each of them. The judgment passage that I'll read is in Jeremiah 4. It goes like this: "I looked" — and you don't know who I is — "I looked on the earth, and lo, it was waste and void; and to the heavens, and they had no light. I looked on the mountains, and lo, they were quaking, and all the hills moved to and fro. I looked, and lo, there was no one at all, and all the birds of the air had fled. I looked, and lo, the fruitful land was a desert, and all its cities were laid waste before the anger, before His fierce anger." 

… Well, you get the "I looked," "I looked," "I looked," and what that text really is Creation in reversal, so you go from heaven and earth to mountains, to birds, to humans, and he's describing it all being taken away at one time. When I hear that kind of poetry, I get chill bumps because it seems to me so contemporary that I think that's how very many people are now experiencing the world. It is as though the ordered world is being taken away from us and it's just so powerfully exquisite. 

…the world we have trusted in is vanishing before our eyes and the world that is coming at us feels like a threat to us and we can't quite see the shape of it… 

BRUEGGEMANN: … our consumer culture wants somehow to narcoticize us so that we just settle in on things. I think Kafka maybe said that a poet or a novelist is like a pick ax that attacks the way we've got things arranged, and I think these poems are like pick axes that are not welcome among us, but we're going to miss out on the reality of our life if we are narcoticized both about the loss and about the newness… 

…"Our consumer culture is organized against history. There is a depreciation of memory and a ridicule of hope, which means everything must be held in the now, either an urgent now or an eternal now"… 

… That's what's extraordinary about the poetry, that it's so elusive that it refuses to be reduced to a formula… 

… We have neglected the lament pieces; we are ill-equipped for the loss that we are facing in our society. So we keep pretending and denying that that's not happening to us… 

… The truth of our life [is that] that our lives are arenas for all kinds of disruptions because it doesn't work out the way we planned [or hoped]… 

… I've recently been thinking more and more that it's so astonishing that the Old Testament prophets hardly ever discuss an issue. They don't discuss abortion, Panama Canal or anything like that. And I think what they're doing is they're going underneath the issues that preoccupy people to the more foundational assumptions that can only be got at in elusive language. Very much the institutional church has been preoccupied with issues… 

… I think if the prophets of the Old Testament really were uncredentialed people without pedigrees, then we ought not to expect people to arise primarily in the institutional church… 

… I've asked myself why in the church does the question of gays and lesbians have such adrenaline. And I've decided for myself that that means most of what we're arguing about with gays and lesbians has nothing to do with gays and lesbians. It is rather that the world is not the way we thought it was going to be. I think what has happened is that we've taken all of our anxiety about the old world disappearing and we've dumped it all on that issue. So I have concluded that it's almost futile to have the theological argument about gays and lesbians anymore because that's not what the argument's about. It is an amorphous anxiety that we are in freefall as a society, and I think we kind of are in freefall as a society, but I don't think it has anything to do with gays and lesbians particularly… 

… Brueggemann (On “Mercy”): You may know that the Hebrew word for — Phyllis Trible has taught us that the Hebrew word for mercy is the word for womb with different vowel points. So mercy, she's suggested, is womb-like mother love. And it is the capacity of a mother to totally give one's self over to the need and reality and identity of the child. And mutatis mutandis then, mercy is the capacity to give one's self away for the sake of the neighborhood. 

Now none of us do that completely, but it makes a difference if the quality of social transactions have to do with the willingness to give one's self away for the sake of the other rather than the need to always be drawing all of the resources to myself for my own well-being. So it is this kind of generous connectedness to others and then I think our task is to see how that translates into policy. I think that a community or a society finally cannot live without the quality of mercy. The problem for us is what will initiate that? What will break the pattern of self-preoccupation enough to notice that the others are out there and that we are attached to them? 

…Tippett: It would be the same, right. You know what? It takes me back to a conversation I had with a clinical psychologist who's studying forgiveness and revenge and how forgiveness is made more possible… [when] we become able to care in larger — wider and wider circles – when we see other's well-being as linked to our own… 

Brueggemann … What the church does with its creeds and its doctrinal tradition, it flattens out all the images and metaphors to make it fit into a nice little formulation and then it's deathly. So we have to communicate to people, if you want a God that is healthier than that, you're going to have to take time to sit with these images and relish them and let them become a part of your prayer life and your vocabulary and your conceptual frame. 

Otherwise, you're just going to be left with these dead formulations, which, again, are why poetry is so important because the poetry just keeps opening and opening and opening so more metaphors gives more access to God and one can work one metaphor awhile, but you can't treat that as though that's the last word. You got to move and have another and another… 

… What a metaphor or image does is to invite you to keep walking around it and looking at it another way and noticing something else. It's a gift that keeps on giving… 

…BRUEGGEMANN (ON READING & RE-READING THE BIBLICAL TXT): I don't want to construct the whole theology out of [a] phrase, but that's enough for that day and I'll find — I'll be given another phrase another day like that. So that's kind of how my mind works. It doesn't yield a doctrinal package; it just yields a bunch of fragments that are not easily fit together. But the reason that works for me is that I am aware that I as a person without entity, I am essentially a collection of fragments that do not fit very well together, so that's OK…

Living without a “Gap” Between Heaven and Earth

One of the more interesting books I glanced through in 2011 (and now need to read in 2012) is Regent College’s Hans Boersma’s Heavenly Participation: The Weaving of a Sacramental Tapestry. It hasn’t been reviewed overly positively on Amazon, but a number of people (e.g. James K A Smith) have included it in their lists of “top” theological reads of 2011. 

In August 2011 Christianbook.com posted a written interview with Boersma in which he talked about Heavenly Participation. It’s fascinating and evocative on many places, and indeed is likely to motivate a number of us (it did me) to get the book of the shelf and read it. Beyond that, the interview offers a number of fascinating perspectives to take with us into the New Year as it unfolds. 

Here are some excerpts from the opening section of the interview: 

“…Prior to modernity, there was no chasm, no huge gap, between heaven and earth in people’s basic mindset. Heavenly realities impinged on life here on earth, while things here below participated in the truth, goodness, and beauty of heaven itself. The gap between creator and creature, between heaven and earth, between nature and grace—or however we want to put this exactly—has made it easy for us to live as if God did not exist… 

… The notion that this-worldly realities are autonomous from God and fully at our disposal is perhaps the most defining characteristic of modernity. By contrast, if you look at this-worldly realities as sacraments that participate in heavenly realities, then you’re going to approach everything around you with a great deal more reverence—because then you realize that behind the creaturely objects that you see, there’s something more, something deeper. In other words, you recognize a divine mystery that lies veiled behind creaturely appearances. The contrast, then, between the pre-modern and the modern mindset is a contrast between reverence and control, between mystery and explanation, between sacrament and idol. The modern rejection of creation’s sacramental participation in the eternal Word of God removes all sense of mystery from the created order. This utilitarian attitude has obvious consequences for the economy, for the environment, for human sexuality—indeed, for every area of human life…” 

You’ll find the complete interview here.   

The Problematic Nature of So-Called “Spiritual Warfare”.

I rediscovered the importance of the Christian tradition for me in the late “eighties” in a suburban Anglican Charismatic Parish. I eventually met my wife (who lived in the neighbourhood) there and it was the church community amongst whom we were married. They were exciting, fun, and formative years for me. 

By my recollection, the “eighties” were significant for a big emphasis (particularly) in Charismatic / Pentecostal streams on one of the biggest ‘Christian’ imports (at the time) from the US: the so-called “spiritual warfare” movement. The novel, which in many ways brought the whole subject to consciousness in many churches, was Frank Perreti’s best selling book This Present Darkness. Behind that came a veritable industry of books and personalities ‘marketing’ the need for, and the methodology of “spiritual warfare”; the means whereby Jesus’ victory and the reality of the Kingdom of God here on earth could be realised. People like C. Peter Wagner, Rick Joyner, John Dawson, John Wimber, Roberts Liardon, Cindy Jacobs and many others. 

In sections of second-hand Christian bookshops, whole sections of their shelving a full of discarded “spiritual warfare” books from that era. As time moved on, and I became more theologically and exegetically literate, the small section of books in my library were passed on to these same second-hand book sellers. 

So, against that backdrop I read Andrew Perriman’s 2^nd January 2012 post. It brought back lots of memories. Some good, some that are now plain embarrassing, and several that made me feel very sad. Here’s the opening section of Andrew’s post: 

2 Corinthians 10: 3-6 “…is one of the passages often cited in support of a theology of “spiritual warfare”—an activity popularly understood as one in which Christians engage in combat with satan and his cohorts through prayer, exorcism, and aggressive proclamation of the Word of God. It is not my intention here to deny the reality of spiritual evil or that there is a dimension of spiritual warfare, in some form or other, to the Christian life. But the way in which the New Testament is used to account for the theology and praxis of spiritual warfare is problematic at a number of points…” 

You can read the very sound reasons why Andrew believes a theology and praxis of spiritual warfare is problematic, here. 

To get you thinking around this subject, and in addition to Andrew's post I'd recommend William Stringfellow and Walter Wink (His "Powers" Trilogy: here, here, and here) as being very helpful

Walter Brueggemann: Preaching an Emancipating Word

Following on from yesterday’s post, a number of you will be pleased, as was I, to discover that Walter Brueggemann has a new publication (pub. Jan 1^st 2012) out and available. It’s titled: The Practice of Prophetic Imagination: Preaching an Emancipating Word (h/c pp.192). 

“When I ponder what the ancient prophets in Israel are doing as we have them in the text, I arrive at this judgment that will serve as my guiding thesis: prophetic proclamation is an attempt to imagine the world as though YHWH— the creator of the world, the deliverer of Israel, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ whom we Christians come to name as Father, Son, and Spirit—were a real character and an effective agent in the world. I use the subjunctive “were” because such a claim is not self-evident and remains to be established again and again in every such utterance. The key term in my thesis is “imagine,” that is, to utter, entertain, describe, and construe a world other than the one that is manifest in front to us, for that present world is readily and commonly taken without such agency or character for YHWH. Thus the offer of prophetic imagination is one that contradicts the taken-for-granted world around us.” 

Walter Brueggemann, Chapter 1, p. 2. 

Contents 

1. The Narrative Embedment of Prophetic Preaching.           

2. Prophetic Preaching as Sustained, Disciplined, Emancipated Imagination.

3. Loss Imagined as Divine Judgment.

4. A Lingering Place of Relinquishment

5. The Burst of Newness amid Waiting           

6. The Continuing Mandate. 

Excerpts from the foreword by John M. Buchanan: 

“…True prophetic preaching is witness, affirmation, proclamation that God is, that God reigns, and that God does not abandon or forget. It is, simply, publicly articulated belief in God. The current climate for this public articulation is ambiguous at best. On the one hand, there are the purveyors of the prosperity gospel who claim, apparently without much concentrated time reading the Bible, that God will bless those who believe fervently enough with this world’s goods, wealth, health, and success. On the other hand are the neo-atheists who sell a lot of books claiming that the whole religion project is anti-scientific, unreasonable nonsense, if it is not positively lethal? There is no God, they insist, and the sooner we acknowledge that, the better off we will be. And multitudes of others—even if they do not go so far as to buy the neo- atheists’ books or gather under their banner—are nevertheless their acolytes when they simply act as if there were no god; they are implicit atheists. In the prevalent American predilection for an “irrelevant transcendence” and a “cozy immanence” Brueggemann perceives the pet gods of our culture. 

Walter Brueggemann has taught us, over the years, to be careful not to circumscribe God. He has reminded us that God cannot be contained in human thought and rhetoric, even theological thought and rhetoric. He instructed us to be modest when speaking about God. He models the lesson himself by declining to translate into English the Hebrew construct YHWH, which designates the Holy One, the “I Am Who I Will Be” of Israel. Walter’s honest, eloquent, and powerful prayers in Awed to Heaven, Rooted in Earth reflect that appropriate theological humility by not using other prayerful modes of address that are so commonly and thoughtlessly used. 

The prophetic tradition, on the other hand, proclaims a God who is an active agent, who is manifestly present in the life of the world and is always up to the business of creating newness. “I am about to do a new thing; do you not perceive it?” (Isa. 43:19). It is precisely when we take the world seriously that the prophetic tradition becomes critical and complex—and urgent. 

… Many in Israel could not imagine a world without Jerusalem, the Temple, or the Davidic monarchy. The events of destruction, exile, and discontinuity were more devastating than anyone could imagine. Prophets deal with loss, prophetic narrative hovers over our loss and grief… 

…Our culture is inclined to hurry past loss and grief, to rush too quickly to resolution. “Everything will be all right,” we assure ourselves, when every- thing is not at all right. The best and most sensitive of us know this in our preaching and pastoral care. But no one is immune to the deep inclination to “get over it” and move on. The prophets know about loss and grief… 

… The Bible, the prophets, know about loss and the importance of dwelling with it… 

Walter Brueggemann reminds that there is always also a movement toward hope. It is not an add-on: hope is not a belated afterthought. Hope is “intrinsic to the prophetic message” (p. 111). The great prophetic themes of destruction and restoration are reenacted in the central Christian themes of crucifixion and resurrection. God, the prophets imagine, is always doing a new thing, creating a way where there is no way, bringing life out of death, light out of very real darkness… 

… The practice of prophetic imagination is, this good book reminds us, a decision to believe and trust that God reigns. It is to imagine the world as God intends it and as God works to bring it about. It is never to deny or hurry past loss and grief. It is to remember—always—that “weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes with the morning” (Ps. 30:5b).” 

John M. Buchanan Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church Chicago, Ill.

Amazon link. 

 

The Prophetic Imagination of Walter Brueggemann

Krista Tippett (Speaking of Faith) introduces her conversation with Walter Brueggemann on her blog (22^nd December 2011): 

“…Walter Brueggemann is not merely an expert. He somehow embodies this tradition of the prophets that he knows as well as anyone living. He is wise and forceful, quick to laugh, passionately challenging, and fiercely hopeful. He demonstrates as much as teaches the way the prophets of the ages are disruptive of politics and culture as usual.

He helps me understand that part of a prophet's power is in wielding language poetically rather than stridently. Beginning with the words they choose, they transcend ideological splits that actually inhibit us from seizing the great challenges and problems of our time.

…He points out that the prophetic voice is not issues-based. It accomplishes the harder, more necessary work of reframing the big picture of what is at stake, so that we can take in the reality of our moment in a new way, with a new sense of what might be possible.

Prophets help us connect the dots between the world as it is and the world as it might be. Prophets tend to emerge in moments of chaos and change, and this is surely a description of our age as of the 1960s or of the era of the biblical fall of Jerusalem. Walter Brueggemann helps us reclaim some important language for being people of change and chaos: the healing necessity of "lamentations," the difference between being bold and being strident, the hard and life-giving work of letting go of comfort for the sake of what is important…”

Krista Tippett. 

You can find the interview here. 

1 Corinthians 13 (NIV)

“1 If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

 4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

 8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. 11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. 12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”